People are the Prize

Monthly Archives: September 2016

We see school attacks as crazy, worthless…senseless (and that’s the right way to see it).

However, the school attacker doesn’t see it the same way. To him, his act of violence has great purpose, meaning, and is far from senseless. The hard part for us is that we must uncover the real meaning behind the attack or we won’t be able to implement the right intervention plan.

While it’s not easy to do, it is critical that we do it because it gives us the best chance to prevent violence.

Like this:

Most students want to help make their school safer, we just haven’t taken the time to give them a mechanism to do that. Here’s a quick, simple, and effective way to equip your students to play their part.

To help make it easier for you, I’ve included a script to use with your students and a note to send to their parents.

It will take less than ten minutes and I guarantee you will immediately make your school safer!

“It could be worse” or “It’s not that bad” may be good things to stay to students. However, these are not easy to hear and accept when you’re facing a tough time or a difficult challenge. Instead, consider telling the student about another person who has experienced something even worse then what they’re going through. By giving the student a model, the student is much more likely to maintain the proper perspective.

In this video, I tell the story of Lt. Bobo and how this same technique helped me to maintain the right perspective in difficult times.

To really connect with kids, it doesn’t take learning their music, being able to recite their latest slang words, wearing their type of clothes, or liking their heroes…and it certainly doesn’t take removing your tie. (If the tie thing is confusing, that’s exactly how I felt after I witnessed a very high ranking person in the DOJ remove his tie believing it was essential to connect with kids).

Watch today’s video as I share that story which left me feeling absolutely certain that we need to change our thinking when it comes to the best way to connect with kids.

Sometimes we forget that little things, if done with real sincerity, can have a huge impact on a person’s life. I’m going to experience this first hand when I read on the wall of a restaurant a saying that causes me to flashback to a much younger time in my life.

The saying on the wall was something, just a little thing, which someone used to say to me (with true sincerity) and this flash back will teach me that in fact little things can last a life time.

P.S. If you don’t have a saying, motto, or some little nugget of wisdom to share with students, then check out some of my favorite ones below the video on my website.

You don’t do a great introduction of your SRO for the benefit of your SRO. You do a great introduction of your SRO to benefit your students!

Every person inside a public school has protective responsibility. Well, it’s more like an obligation. When you introduce your SRO as the person who is here to make our school safe, you inadvertently release everyone else of that obligation (or at least that’s what too many hear). Such an introduction doesn’t hurt the SRO, but it diminishes your overall safety efforts because it doesn’t reinforce the necessitythat everyone has to play their part in preventing violence.

Use this example as a possible way to introduce your SRO (to benefit your students)!

Bestselling author, Malcolm Gladwell, used the analogy of a person caught up in a riot to describe why students may be attacking our schools.

He asserted that like those in a riot who get carried away by the moment (as well as the crowd) and impulsively act in a manner that they never would any other time, so are students who are attacking our schools.

While it’s a very creative analogy, and something worth thinking about, it is unfortunately not the case with school attackers and decades of data disprove it this theory.